The Broad Majestic Shannon
by ALC Punk
Summary: House and BSG Allison Cameron views life a bit differently, now the world has ended.


Disclaimer: Not mine. Crossover: House/new Battlestar Galactica Rating: 13+ Pairing: Allison Cameron/Greg House (mentioned), Allison Cameron/Lt. Gaeta. Genre: er... Angst, introspection Length: 1,000+ Notes: okay, so, dude, this came out of a conversation musicforculons and I were having this morning at about 4am, about how Gaeta gets no love and stuff. And, er, it's more about Allison, but for some reason she wanted to be the narrator.Title completely stolen from The Pogues (although the flavor of the song kind of matches this, anyway)

**The Broad Majestic Shannon**  
_by ALC Punk!_

Lt. Gaeta likes his coffee black with one sugar.

Allison knows because she brought coffee to everyone in CIC during that five-day stretch where no one slept. She's a diagnostician and a doctor, but she made and served coffee while the soldiers around her kept the Cylons from destroying them all.

It's something she hasn't ever thanked them for. Possibly because she isn't quite sure what to say (this doesn't fall under apologizing for Greg House's inflammatory insults to a patient) to them.

Also possibly because they never seem to realize they need thanks.

Some of the viper pilots are wild and insane, kissing unwary people (Foreman still looks disturbed every time someone in a flight suit comes by the infirmary, though Allison is fairly certain Lt. Thrace doesn't remember bouncing in after one shift and kissing him soundly before falling asleep--Cottle said she'd taken too many stims). But they're doing it for fun, and to reaffirm that they're alive.

In a fleet of less than 50,000 people, there's not much call for brain surgery.

Neither is there call for letters to patients (waste of paper and computer resources), or a weekly case involving some strange and (sometimes) infectious disease. Allison thinks she appreciates the downtime, even at the cost of her world.

But she can make coffee, and hold hands, and sometimes, she can make him smile at her.

They meet after their shifts in one of the common rooms. They've got their own table now (and Foreman teases her mercilessly about dating a soldier), off to one side. It's not intimate (on a ship crammed with people, nothing is), but it's quiet and it's theirs (there's a scratch in the surface that she likes to run her finger over).

She always brings the coffee, and he's sometimes late. Usually because there was a crisis, or something happened that required he not leave CIC. She understands (being understanding used to drive her mother insane), and never objects.

Sometimes, their coffee is cold (not to mention that it's mostly black sludge, anyway).

He once asked her how easy it was to work with Dr. Cottle. She'd laughed and told him working with Cottle was easy, after being under the aegis of Greg House. Besides, she didn't have to write letters, or lie to patients on his behalf.

They don't talk often, the silence is usually enough for them to both decompress. But she knows things about him--he likes order over chaos. His mother wanted him to be a computer scientist, and his father wanted him to be a priest. She thinks they'd both be proud of him, now. His oldest sister liked to get him into trouble, and he still has resentment about it.

And he knows things about her. Little things.

Not the big ones. Not the ones that make her smile falter when he's not there to see it.

He doesn't know that she still misses Greg House fiercely, that she misses her own family less. Foreman guesses, but he never presses (he never would, anyway). And Allison is certainly not telling Cottle she's pining for a man who told her the only reason she wanted him was because he was damaged.

And she's not admitting to herself that he might have been right, either.

She misses Chase, but only because he could distract Foreman from being an ass, and she misses the hospital, and knowing there was a purpose in her life. She sometimes wonders if there will ever be a time when they settle down and she can teach. Pass on her knowledge of infectious diseases, cranky doctors, and how to know when someone's lying.

Not that she was ever all that good at the latter.

Gaeta is as exacting as she is, in some ways. She knows that he lines up the salt shaker and the pepper just so (he thinks she isn't watching). Something tells her his correspondence would be just as organized. There'd be folders on his desktop pertaining to each subsection: complaints, lawsuit threats, death threats, and hell-has-frozen-over-thank yous.

Of course, Gaeta doesn't have to deal with a neurotic doctor who thinks being nice is pointless.

Instead, he has to deal with officers, pilots, marines, and everything in-between. He has to coordinate battle information and make sure all of the reports are filed in the appropriate places. At least, that's what she'd gotten from that five days of no sleep.

Allison doesn't remember when they first started having coffee together. She thinks it was after the revolt on the _Astral Queen_, and it was definitely before the explosion in the hangar (she actually felt useful, debriding and patching up burns--better than dealing with the dead).

They have progressed to first names--well, she tells him to call her Allison, and he blushes. And she forgets and calls him Gaeta. She thinks it's because she prefers it to his first name.

One other thing she knows (and the one that makes her almost blush when Foremen gets into irritating older brother mode) is that he likes her hair in a ponytail. She's caught the way his eyes follow her head, and it took time (and a conversation with Dee that she's not sure she ever wants to repeat) to figure it out.

It's a small thing, wearing her hair pulled back. It makes it easier to do whatever scutwork they've found for her to do. She convinces herself that's the only reason she does it.

Besides, it's not as if there's privacy anywhere on the ship for anything.

If she were to even consider doing anything.

Which she isn't.

But she likes wearing her hair up, likes making him smile, and she listens when he babbles (sometimes) randomly about AV club, blowing himself up, and his little sister.

And she hopes he isn't thinking of her as a replacement for his siblings.

A lot.

-f-


End file.
